After receiving my new camera last week and playing around with some shots of our cat Sam, I didn’t have a chance to do much more with it until Saturday. I got up before the sun to head out to my favorite park, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, to break the camera in under more demanding conditions. Of course, since I hadn’t had time to read the manual any further, I knew better than to try and play around with any of the complicated new settings.

But so much on the camera is different than my other cameras, even some simple things weren’t so simple.

Once I got there, I realized right away that the autofocus was still linked to the shutter button, something I disable immediately on all my cameras. Since even the menu system on the camera is completely different than my past three, it took me a while to find the custom function to disable it. The new camera has a dedicated autofocus button on the back, which I like, but my muscle memory isn’t yet trained to reach for it instead of another nearby button, although I did get a bit better as the day went along.

And then there’s the three buttons on top that set six functions on the camera. Those same three buttons are on the 7D, and the six functions are still there, but now they’re mapped in different ways to the buttons.

Alrighty then! Another muscle memory issue that will make switching between the 7D and 10D not as seamless as I’d like.

But the biggest problem I had was that the mode dial kept changing on its own. So while I mostly shoot in aperture priority mode, once I found it in shutter priority mode, and once in program mode. It’s either a lot easier to bump into the next position than my old cameras, or I just had bad luck, but that’s something I’m going to need to keep an eye on.

But the rest of the body features have been tickling my fancy.

When I first arrived at the refuge, it was a bit foggy but near-in visibility was fine. Halfway through the auto tour a whole family of river otters moved from one lake to another right in front of my car. Couldn’t manage any pictures, but still a nice welcome to the refuge after a six month absence.

Shortly thereafter a small flock of yellow-ish birds flew beside the car but my brain couldn’t pick up the ID. Eventually the rusty gears kicked into motion and I realized they were western meadowlarks. By this time they were a bit further off, but I was able to make an environmental portrait of this one on the teasel. Part of my confusion may have been rust, but part may have been that I’m not sure I’ve seen them in nonbreeding plumage before. The brown V that separates the yellow of its chin and chest will turn a conspicuous dark black in the spring and through the breeding season, so I was thrown for a bit.

The meadowlark is the state bird of Oregon, selected by schoolchildren in 1927, although I believe there have been efforts to change it. While I have seen them in Oregon, this one is from Washington, whose state bird is a different kind of yellow, the American goldfinch.

After photographing my state bird in another state, I started laughing quietly as I continued on the auto tour, and then couldn’t stop laughing. Normally a sign of either lack of sleep or impending mental collapse, but in this case it was camera induced. While photographing the meadowlark, I held the shutter down for the normal time, intending to take a few frames, but the 7D shoots at 8 frames per second and rattled off a whole sequence, catching me offguard.

One pleasant surprise is how much quieter and softer the shutter sound is on the 7D compared to the 20D. When I went from the 10D to the 20D, the harsher shutter sound of the 20D was about the only drawback, so I’m happy to be back to a quieter sound. And since the 7D’s shutter (and mirror) are working a lot harder than on my previous cameras, I definitely tip my hat to the engineers at Canon for this one.

After finally seeing raccoons again, but far enough off that I could only make an environmental portrait, I assumed it wasn’t going to be a great day for close-ups. And I was OK with it, as it was fun to be back at one of my favorite haunts, and I had already come across snow geese, the first time I’ve ever seen them there, plus the raccoons and the otters.

But then I saw a hunting heron snag a vole near the road, came across the biggest flock of female redwings I’ve ever seen, and finally saw a raccoon up close for my best pictures yet of this common but elusive (for me) species, then a female canvasback close to the road.

One other thing became clear: I’m going to need to get new memory cards, and soon. Even my 8GB card filled up in no time, and my once large 2GB cards now seem comically small. And the huge files are making my MacBook cry for mercy.

But yeah, I think I’m going to love this camera.